Bernie Sanders’ AI ‘gotcha’ video flies, but memes are good

In the new viral videoSenator Bernie Sanders tried to expose how AI companies are threatening the privacy of the American people, but he ended up showing how the tendency of AI chatbots to interact with and influence their users can make chatbots themselves a mirror of users’ beliefs rather than a tool of discovery.

We have seen this problem before in the population suffering from “AI psychosis,” which is when AI chatbots reinforce the irrational thoughts and beliefs of an unsettled human. black model has caused users to kill themselves, several lawsuits say.

In the case of Sanders, the AI ​​sycophancy appeared as an AI chatbot that tailored its responses to suit the politician.

It’s worth noting that the interview begins with Sanders introducing himself to Claude (whom he mistakenly refers to as an AI “assistant”) – a move that could help influence the chatbot’s responses.

Then, Sanders asks questions about how AI companies collect information and other private information, Claude answers in an affirmative manner with what the politician wants to hear. In part, it’s because of the way Sanders frames his questions, asking things like, “What would surprise the American people about how that information is collected?” or “How can we trust AI companies to protect our privacy when they use people’s privacy to make money?” These leading questions force the chatbot to understand what the question is saying and come up with the right answer. That’s how these things work.

And when Claude’s response suggested that the topic was more complex or more nuanced than Sanders made it out to be, Sanders would not agree, pushing the chatter to admit, regarding AI’s self-control, that the senator “was right.”

The sycophantic nature of AI is what can lead people to dangerous paths when they think that a chatbot is a source of universal truth, not a tool that can be influenced by the user.

It’s unclear if Sanders knows this is the case and doesn’t care (because this is just marketing, after all!), or if he thinks he’s tricked Claude into becoming a whistleblower in the AI ​​industry.

And, of course, there’s also the question of whether the Sanders team activated the chatbot to respond in a certain way, because this was a “conversation”.

While there are real concerns about data collection and privacy, things are not as black and white as the AI ​​solutions in this video suggest.

We already live in a world where companies collect and sell user data on the Internet – and we have for years. We know that social media giants like Meta have turned personalized advertising into a multi-billion dollar printing machine. And thanks to regular technology reporting, we know that governments around the world periodically request access to user data for their own purposes.

AI may represent a new avenue for policymakers to control, but human data has it has long been promoting the digital economy. (Incidentally, Anthropic is an AI company that has pledged not to use personalized ads to make money, despite its responses to Sanders.)

Although the whole conversation between Sanders and Claude misses the mark for anyone who understands how AI chatbots work, we can appreciate it for giving us new memes.